Fighting to the Bitter End
by Ackradin
Summary: (A very short one shot, 2x1, Duo POV) You'd think the pilots would be used to fighting losing battles. There's one fight Duo just can't seem to win.


**_Disclaimer –_** Not mine cries

**_Warnings – _**Eh, swearing, shounen ai (Duo / Heero), Relena bashing (in a way), not an overly happy lil story.

**_Title – Fighting to the Bitter End_**

Some things are worth fighting for.

There are some things that, no matter what, you'll fight to the bitter end to protect. Our very existence for one, as it seems to be the human desire to continue on surviving. Some fight harder than others, some with a greater passion. Even so, there's no denying that we'll duke it out long and hard and violently for the right to live another day. I know this, because I've been doing it for as long as I can remember. It's taught me a valuable lesson too.

No matter how hard you fight, or how passionately you believe that your cause is the right one, there will always be someone to try and push you down, prove you wrong, and beat the fucking shit outta ya until there's blood spurting out your nose and everything past your broken nose is a dizzy blur. That taught me a lesson too; No matter how right you think you are, the good guy _doesn't_ always win. There's no right or wrong about it, what it comes down to, is who can win the battle. Who can be the biggest stubborn motherfucker and stand their ground the longest until everyone else gives up, cowers at their feet, or is dead in the gutter. No matter what you think, God is not on your side. God does not give a damn about you and your self-righteous, grand and holy point of view, no matter how many times a day you pray to him. When you fight, you fight alone. And when I fight, I know that the only thing that follows me into battle, is Death, and that suits me just fine. Why fight for everything you want, unless you're prepared to lose everything you already have? After all, you cannot assume your victory to be assured. Nothing is certain.

And it's this uncertainty that drives us to fight in the first place. The unknowing. The desire to know. The _need_ to know. By us fighting in any way, shape or form, it allows us to gain an element of control. Makes us feel like we are the masters, like we have some control over our pitiful, depressing lives. Makes you feel good, don't it? When you yell at someone (you know they deserved it), it pumps you up with energy, lifts you right up. Same as when you get into a fight and start beating the crap out of someone, nothing makes you feel more in control than when you know you have the power over someone else's life, like you have control.

And in the end, isn't that what we're fighting for? Control over a city, a state, a country, a whole fucking world. Who wants to share anyway? Control over that bastard that always looks at you funny, or the bully that's made your life a living hell for as long as you can remember. Control over our friends, our lovers, ourselves. We want the world to bend to our every will, to work for us. We want control over our emotions – she didn't need to know that her cheating on you fucking tore your heart to pieces, did she? No one needs to see how sad, how damn _normal_ you really are. No one likes to show weakness, and to have control, is to have control over those weaknesses.

But what happens when you know you can't win the fight, no matter how desperately you wish it so? Do you yield? Do you throw your hands up in the air, tossing aside the last shreds of your dignity? Or, do you go down kicking and screaming and biting until they tranquilize you into a never-ending sleep? In the end, what you've got to consider is two very important things. How much do you want it, and who are you up against. Then again, in the end, if you want it more than anything, so unbearably and desperately, nothing and no one would deter you from your frame of mind.

Problem is, what if what if the thing you want, doesn't want you? Such thoughts only lead to more desperation, a greater need for control. The need to _make_ it want you.

Some times it can be so completely and utterly maddening how blind he is to everything. For all his talents, his sickening perfection, he just doesn't seem capable of noticing the little things. And it hurts.

It really fucking hurts.

All you want to do is take control of the situation, to make things begin to go the way you want. Sometimes you forget that what you want isn't necessarily what _they_ want, and that hurts too. Knowing you have no control over anything, knowing the control is with their gorgeous hands and they don't even know it. It'd be so easy for him to take that control and abuse it most thoroughly, which scares you even more because no one likes to give away the little control they've managed to salvage, never mind who's taking it.

But it's always been about control with him, hasn't it? Is he that insecure? That unsure of himself that he needs to gain control over everything around him just to prove he's worth existing? Why can't he be less selfish? Why can't he just... let go of some of that control? Maybe then he'd see things as they really are.

See me as I really am.

Now that would be something. Could he see behind my jester mask? Would he even want to? No, I suppose not. But, I suppose the question I really want is ask, isn't worth asking. And why is that?

Because she ruined him. She fucking led him on and used him and treated him like shit and broke him to pieces. And what does he do? He leaves the pieces right where they are. God forbid that someone should try and help him pick them up. She fought and fought and fought for him, and I lost my silent battle against her. I lost and I didn't try to fight back. She had her control over him, and she flaunted it, waved it around like a pretty pink banner to show all the world when really, all she wanted was to be able to parade around like the fucking tart she is with that fucking banner to prove that indeed, she had control of Heero Yuy. Savior of Earth and the Colonies, Hero and esteemed Gundam pilot. All she wanted was the power that title held, not the beautiful, lost boy behind it. Even now that she's packed up and toddled on off on her way, he still feels like he can't get back the control he lost to her. How could she so ruthlessly break something that was clearly fragile?

Heartless bitch.

But nothing I say or do could possibly make amends to the damage she's done, to give him back the control he so desperately seeks. All I want is for Heero to be happy, no matter what that takes, and I tell him so.

Naturally, he just sits there. Why is it so hard for him to understand? Am I not allowed to care about him? Is it so impossibly hard for him to grasp such a concept? He does that thing where he stares unblinking, like he's totally fazed out. Maybe he's afraid, not surprising considering what happened with the last person who claimed to care about him. He doesn't need to be afraid of me. I tell him that too. He sits back in his chair silently, and I know he's mentally begging for me to just go away.

Too bad Heero, since when have I ever listened to you? I'm not gunna start now either.

I watch sadly has he molds himself into the soft cushiony chair, and it seems like his still small body could be engulfed all too easily. He turns his head to glare at me, a move that lost its effect long ago. I know not to tell him that, because it will only serve to really make him annoyed with me. I also know that soon, he will sigh and quietly ask me to leave him alone. He'll tell me that he's fine, and that I should go home. I'll tell him that I don't have a home to go to, and that I'm quite happy here with him. He'll glare again, and I'll quietly walk over to him kneeling in front of his curled up form.

Just as I knew it would, it happens, same as always.

Balancing on the balls of my feet, and a hand on each of his thighs, I lean up to stare him right in the eye. I tell him that no matter what, I'm always gunna stick around, and no amount of death glares and 'omae wo korosu's could possibly change my mind. He stares at me in resignation, and there is a sharp pain in my chest because I know that he doesn't believe me. He thinks I'll be just like her, that I would hurt him. He thinks that I will take away the little control he has left, what he's fighting to hold on to with dear life. He sees me as a threat, something to hold at a distance and to never let up close. And that makes me angry because it's all her fault he's like this, and there is nothing I can do.

He watches me intently, knowing what will happen next. Leaning up closer to him, I rest my forehead against his. He doesn't move or react, but I knew he wouldn't. As I stare into his deep Prussian eyes that seem so cold and dark, I tell him that I will always be there, whether he wants it or not. I say that after surviving through so much, why should I give up now? He blinks at me, and as always, I kiss him ever so lightly on the corner of his rosy pink lips.

Leaning back, I tell him that I should go as my flight is some ungodly hour of the morning. He nods silently, and I have no choice but to leave him in silence. As I quietly shut the door of his small apartment behind me, I know that he hasn't moved, and that he probably won't for several hours. In the morning, he'll go off to the Preventers office and do the only thing he's ever known. He'll fight, for justice and freedom and the protection of others but he'll never fight for himself. He'll never, never give himself that luxury of fighting for what he truly wants. He knows that I'll be back from L2 in a couple of weeks, I always am. I'll drag him out with the boys and we'll all get drunk. I'll take him home and we'll sit in silence until somehow we're sober again, and the pattern will repeat itself.

They always ask why I bother, why am I so bloody persistent? It's not a simple answer of ' I love him' like they think, it's a lot more than that.

I bother because I believe he's worth fighting for, and I'll be damned if I'm gunna give up this time around. What makes it so much harder is that the person I'm fighting for, is fighting me right back. He doesn't understand that I don't want to control him, that I don't want a prize. I just want him. Plain and simple, no strings attached. And even though it seems like I'm gunna be in it for the long haul and stuck in my trenches for a damn while yet, I'm willing to wait. I'm willing to wait for Heero to see that I'm trying to hand my control over to him whole-heartedly, for him to see that I'm not like her.

Some things are worth fighting for, sometimes they just don't realize their own true worth, and that's why you have to show _them _they're worth fighting for.


End file.
